Paris plans 400 free WiFi hotspots

Paris plans to offer free WiFi at 400 hotspots across the city, with the goal of city-wide WiFi coverage by the end of 2007.

The city administration will also encourage development of new street furniture to make laptop users more comfortable, it said this week.

The city authority wants to encourage development of a more nomadic lifestyle in public spaces. The project will cost around €3 million (US$3.6 million), said city spokesman Lionel Bordeaux. The city will split the cost equally with the administration responsible for the greater Paris area, he said.

The hotspots should each be able to serve 30 users simultaneously, providing a reasonable quality of Internet access, Bordeaux said.

Paris is not the first city to have such ambitions: San Francisco, among other US cities, is also planning a city-wide WiFi network, provided by Google and EarthLink and partly funded through advertising.

In Paris, the city authority is stepping into what is largely considered the domain of private enterprise, taking advantage of a French law that allows municipal authorities to intervene and provide such services for the public good where the commercial offering is deemed insufficient. However, the city wants business to play its part in rolling out coverage too.